Cutting the Cord Part 1: The Assessment

Assessing your Cord Cutting Potential

The first step in assessing whether cutting the cord will be a good fit for you is to write down all the shows you and whoever you’re sharing your cable/satellite with watch regularly. Simply documenting the name of the shows, what channels they are on and whether or not you can get them from other sources may make the decision a simple affair.

For example, if you just have to watch Homeland on Showtime when it airs and can’t wait the 6-12 months for the DVD to come out, then you can probably assume that cutting the cord isn’t going to work for you.

My Experience: When I first started thinking about cutting the cord, there were some shows on our list that we had concerns about not being able to see on ‘the day they aired’ on cable/satellite. Shows like MythBusters, Burn Notice and The Venture Brothers were things I loved watching when they first aired. While many of them would eventually become available on Netflix, it could be a year or more before we got to see them. We’ve come to find out that those concerns were unfounded. Since we have so much content available at our fingertips, there’s always something available just waiting for us to watch. Over the air content, Netfli, Hulu and even webcasts have more than enough for us to view whenever we feel like ‘watching something’, that the whole issue became a moot point. Our Netflix Instant Queue alone is over 100 titles. While there are some shows we can’t watch as they’re released, we have more than enough to keep us occupied until they actually show up somewhere that we can watch.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least mention the fact that just about anything that airs on cable/satellite can likely be found online within a few hours of its original air time you know where to look. While I won’t condone doing that, it’s an option for someone who isn’t worried about the legal ramifications of getting their content through "other" means.

One thing you can’t overlook is what content you can get for free with local ‘Over the Air’ broadcasts. With a High Definition antenna and a tuner card in your HTPC, you may very well have access to a High Definition signal for all the big networks (ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox) that’s even better than what you’d get from your cable/satellite company. Your cable/satellite company needs to compress the signal of all its television stations so it can cram them all down the pipe to your house where Over the Air is the opposite. Local stations can broadcast across the air waves in all their High Definition glory and if you can pick them up are an easy way to get all your Network and Local content for no cost.

To see what channels you may be able to pick up "Over the Air" there are a few sites like AntennaWeb and TVFool that are worth a look.

When you supply either of the sites with a few pieces of information such as your Zip Code, Street Address and where the antenna will be located, they will give you a full report of what stations you should be able to pick up.

The map and information will list how many channels/stations you can pick up. Don’t be confused when the ‘Channels’ and ‘Over the Air Stations’ numbers don’t match. With the digital spectrum, stations can broadcast multiple signals and you may likely have 3 ‘channels’ for one station. Often the primary channel shows the station’s main content, while others show things like local weather, local events or even syndicated reruns of old shows. The map will also give you detailed information about the distance you are from the transmitter, and its compass heading from you. So if a station is listed as ‘15 miles at 310⁰’, you’ll want to point your antenna 310 degrees for the best signal. We’ll get more into specific antennas later, but for now, with Antenna Web, you can quickly get a list of what stations you’ll have access to for free over the air. Assuming you’re within a 40-50 mile radius of a fairly large city, you will likely be able to get all the big networks, some PBS and a perhaps even a few others.

My Experience: In my area, we’re anywhere from 20 to 40 miles from most of the transmitters. With a half way decent antenna we’ve been able to pick up most things without a problem. I’ve also come to discover that the days of the ‘crazy UHF’ channels are not dead, and there’s a few extra ‘antenna only’ TV stations we are able to pick up like MeTV and AntennaTV. These stations are chock full of great old TV shows from the 60’s through the 80’s and I actually find myself pretty frequently sitting down to catch old episodes of MASH, WKRP in Cincinnati, Cheers or even The Twilight Zone.

My Experience: I haven't had cable for over a decade or longer if I really think about it. I am probably not the norm but once I was without it for long enough, I didn't miss it a bit. the only thing I have now is Netflix, Amazon Prime streaming (great added value to Prime which I am going to have anyway), and my server with all of my movies. I couldn't imagine going back to $150 monthly bills for so called entertainment when everything I need comes over my $65 a month 27/5 fiber internet connection and Netflix for $17.47 (streaming plus one dvd at a time). And when there isn't anything I really am in the mood for on those, I go outside. Crazy, I know.

We cut the cord 2-1/2 years ago and have saved $2500. I put 2 antennas in our attic (1 pointed towards Boston which is about 45 miles south of us and 1 pointed 45 miles NW toward Manchester, NH mainly for local news/weather). We get about 25 channels. Now we have 3 TVs with HTPCs connected (main HTPC in living room connected to plasma, 2 mini-HTPCs on the HDTVs in the 2 bedrooms for streaming over the home network) and my wife and I have tuner cards in our desktops. Between OTA, downloaded content on our NAS, PlayOn (and some scripts purchased to use with it) we can watch just about anything EXCEPT sports not on OTA. If you are a sports junkie, OTA is not for you. We have an Amazon Prime account as well.

Also the signal gathering capabilities of tuners whether in your TV, tuner card, digital converter box can vary. Each of our 3 TVs (Samsung, Toshiba, Viore) will get 1 or 2 stations that the other TVs don't get or as strong.

All 3 of our HTPCs use AMD APU based systems- an A10-5700 in the living room, A6-3500 in our bedroom and an A4-3400 in the spare bedroom. All have 8Gb ram/64Gb SSDs/Win7x64.A10 system has a Blu-Ray drive in it.

I was wondering what type of antennas did you put into your attic? I am in a similar location as you are. Roughly 50 miles to Boston and 26 miles to Manchester, NH.

I am thinking of cutting the cord and am in the beginning stages of planing this out. Making an HTPC (or buying one) and using it with our two tv's. We have an AppleTV and Roku and also use Amazon Prime.

Cable television is basically paying them to shove ads down our throats. I love using Netflix and youtube. (I also spend some of the spare time playing all of the Steam games residing on my hard drive.)

I've never hand any problems with gaming on DSL, you don't need massive bandwidth to game. 6Mb (roughly 640KB down and 128KB up real world on my connection) is plenty, The Ping is the critical part. Depending on server location/game I average 40ms. Which is solid.

BUT as to the multi-people usage, yes DSL would blow if you had to share, I live alone so it's not a problem.

You can also watch episodes from the channel's own website, such as adultswim.com and comedy central.

Who needs proprietary networks when the Internet can provide all sorts of entertainment. It is getting to the point where computer illiterates can easily access TV media over the Internet and that's bad for Cable

Hehe, it looks like you guys took the advice I had quite awhile back and did an article on dropping cable/satellite. I "cut the cord" back in April of 2011, but I recently signed back up with Directv. Why you ask? They had a deal I couldn't refuse. My bill is only about $10 a month higher than what I was paying just for Tivo standalone service. In 2 years though I'm sure they'll raise my prices again and that's when I'll once again be dropping them.

Yep, I cut the cord almost fifteen years ago. I didn't grow up watching cable and only had it for a couple of years, as an adult. I wasn't impressed. Yes, some of the best television that has ever existed is on these days, but it's not worth $200/mo for it.

So, after a couple of years, I dropped it. Netflix and torrents make up for most of it. I don't use Hulu, because I'm not going to pay $10/mo for a crappy selection of crappy shows from a few crappy networks (and not even get the full archive of the shows!) and then be slammed with as many ads as I'd get from live television, at the same time.

I spend $8/mo for Netflix, $5/mo for MOG (for my music), $115/mo for my 22mbps/10mbps internet connection (business account, so no 250gb limitations -- I tend to do 1-2tb of data a month, easily). Between Netflix and podcasts, I don't really even have time for any other entertainment.

I've been thinking about cutting the cord but the options in Canada are not as great as in the USA. Canadian Netflix is nowhere near as good as the USA offering, Hulu isn't available etc. I don't even think you can get OTA HD unless you are near the USA border. If you are into sports then you need to see what the streaming offerings are (which are better for NFL in Canada than in USA). The more casual shows like the HGTV and Food ones don't seem available anywhere, so it looks like I'm stuck with cable. I use enough bandwidth without cutting cable, I'd need a super expensive internet package if I did (glad to see that added on as a point at the end). It's just not worth it for me so I've got basic cable and just added all the HD channels to make it as cheap as I can. I'm sure I'll revisit the decision annually. We watch a lot of TV, so I can justify the expense. If there were better options AND our TV consumption dropped, I'd likely be cutting the cord.

klatch, I just recently cut the cord this month and so far couldn't be happier. I live in Whitby, ON (Canada) and can pick up Fox, CBS, ABC (?), The CW, CityTV, CTV, TVO, Global, occasionally ION, and a slew of others - this is without a pre-amp.

Our bill was approaching $170/mo for Rogers VIP + movies with one PVR. That's over $2000 for what I estimate to be about 6 hrs of TV/week...and I recently received notice that prices were going up a few dollars for each package. This got me thinking. I personally don't watch a lot of TV and the shows that my wife and I watch to chill out (Elementary, Nikita, Supernatural, Vampire Diaries, etc) are all available in HD OTA. My wife can also get Glee, X Factor, etc so that's covered too. I'm not into sports as I'm more into doing than watching (road cycling addict.)

There are a few shows that we're losing like Dexter and The Walking Dead, but the latter is available directly from AMCTV.com, iTunes (ugh - too expensive), or torrent.

As for Netflix, if you have a Canadian account, you can use a service like Unblock-us.com to access Netflix US content! Unblock-us.com is $4.99/mo CDN and simply requires you to point to their DNS servers which, I assume, send your requests to one or more proxy servers in the US. No need for VPN and the associated overhead (and cost.) Unblock-us also gives you access to free Hulu content (The Simpsons, etc.)

So yeah, the overall experience isn't as completely integrated and smooth as cable, but saving $2000/yr - ~$144/yr for Netflix/Unblock-Us seems worth it to me, especially if you aren't glued to the TV more than an hour or two a day.

I built a PVR for $600 (core components), though spent another $500 on an additional Hauppauge 2250 ATSC tuner + 2nd SSD for recorded content (240gb, we delete TV content immediately after watching.) This HTPC also runs VMWare WS9 and hosts the domain controller and TFS servers for my work lab environment. The PVR cost will pay for itself in a year.

I'm sorry but did you miss the part where I said I also use it for VMs? :)

SSDs are also silent while most fast mechanical drives, capable of recording 4 shows at the same time, are not. Plus mechanical drives suck more power, generate more heat, and take up more space. If I want to store television shows, I'll use my 1TB NAS drive (QNAP TS-239Pro) and schedule a time to copy them...or setup up a iSCSI target and write over the 1Gbps LAN connection I've dedicated for VM traffic; my NAS drive has two ethernet ports, one of which is setup on separate network.

I cut the cord 3 1/2 years ago. I've use OTA TV, internet streaming, and DVDs. Let's face it, the only content you can't get (legally) either OTA, over the internet, or on packaged media (DVD or Blue Ray)is ESPN and the regional sports networks. I really can't see that being worth the money for pay-TV.

Cord-cutter here in Toronto. About 20+ channels. Don't use Netflix and really don't feel like I'm missing out on anything.

Another great resource for cord-cutters looking to go the antenna route is Digitalhome. Don't be scared by the .ca, lots of Americans on there and great sub-forums for specific regions of North America:

After installing XBMC, getting it setup, and configuring my remote I will never go back to cable. not only is it cheaper, but I get more content and have the ability to share it throughout my home. Plus I can stream Huli, Netflix, MLB, Pandora and other great stuff.